Your English professor will catch you!

With the incredible amount of content on the web how do we know if we’re just repeating ourselves? The Internet has given many a chance to publish their thoughts in a public forum where many were never able to before. It’s become easy to publish a blog or a personal web page with services such as My Space or Word Press. With as much content on the web there has to be a blog or two or a web page or two where the content is similar or almost identical. It may be highly improbable, but can it happen? What I really wonder is, can my brief ramblings I posted on a blog end up in someone’s term paper or book report? I don’t claim to be an expert on anything you would want to turn in to your English professor, but I would find it humorous and a bit incredible.

Here’s an interesting article I found on the high tech battle on plagiarism.

Don’t copy any of this without proper citations. Your English professor will catch you.

You don't have to be a dancer to attend their conference...

I recently attended the Dance/USA National Round Table in Portland, OR, and thought I'd share a few things from the event... First, I am scared to try and move in any way that might be considered "graceful."

On my second day at the conference, I decided to check out one of the "Get up and Move!" morning warm-up sessions.

"Heck," I thought, "They can't be doing much more than stretching at this ungodly hour."

When I peeked in the session room, it looked like the cast of Cirque du Soleil warming up for a show. This was nothing like my high school P.E. stretch-out activities.

I walked past the session room and got a donut instead.

Speaking of Cirque du Soleil, please check out their Web site for an example of how extreme site design can be a hassle for visitors.

While it's important for arts organizations to offer aesthetically pleasing and stimulating Web experiences, it is equally important to offer alternative sites for users with older computers. If you're going to include fancy Web elements, such as Flash animation, on your site, be sure to offer a non-Flash version as well. Otherwise, you could be shutting out a large portion of your audience.

By the way, the clown that greets you on the Cirque du Soleil front page is absolutely terrifying:

"Mommy, I don't want to go into that Web site. Please don't make me go."

It was also confirmed during my time in Portland that technology is unavoidable. Many of the discussions at the Dance/USA conference revolved around technology. Dance company administrators seem to be very interested in how their organizations can begin using MySpace, YouTube and other popular Internet tools to increase audience and potential audience awareness.

YouTube works especially well for arts groups with visually gripping programming. The site is a free service that allows you to upload and share videos. Click here to visit the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture (NAMAC) Web site and read about some documentary filmmakers that are using YouTube to share their work about the rebuilding of New Orleans.

One hundred years from now...

Will your organization's files, images and records still be around? And if so, will people be able to view them? I highly enjoyed these thoughts by Momus in wired.com about the creation and demise of the formats with which we store our music, photos, film, literature and more. As paper documentation succumbs to the proliferation of digitized formats, cultural and art institutions are joining the race to keep up. A decrease in office paper may be great news for the environment, but what will happen to these gigabytes upon terabytes of historical data 100, 50, even 10 years from now when the technology we used today is a relic?